


By The Second

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Home and Away [27]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-17
Updated: 2016-09-17
Packaged: 2018-08-15 12:54:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8057200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: Written for the comment_fic prompt: "Stargate Atlantis, Any, Blood and Sand."Jack O'Neill has drinks with Shen Xiaoyi...and someone else.





	By The Second

“What’ll it be?” The bartender was an attractive woman, red-blonde hair, pouty smile, low-cut blouse, about a decade too young for Jack (although about the same age as Major Lorne, now that he thought about it, and he pushed that thought aside).  
  
Jack went to ask for a pint of guinness, because he was nothing if not traditional when it came to beverages, and then his date for the evening sat down on the barstool beside him. Ambassador Shen, of Jack’s favorite organization, the IOA.  
  
“Blood and Sand,” he said, and Shen raised her eyebrows, looked offended, but the bartender nodded and smiled and said, “Right away, sir,” and turned to make his drink.  
  
“What’ll you have?” Jack smiled at Shen. “I’m buying.”  
  
“Midori sour.” Shen settled onto the bar stool and crossed her legs primly.   
  
When the bartender returned with Jack’s drink, he ordered Shen’s. “So, what have I done, that I merited an invitation to drinks from Ambassador Shen?”  
  
In Washington DC, ambassadors were a dime a dozen, and they were having drinks in one of a hundred upscale bars were power-brokering took place off the record, after hours, under cover of smiles and darkness and casual friendship.  
  
“You’re meddling in my work,” Shen said.  
  
Jack raised his eyebrows. “Me? I’ve been riding a desk in Washington like the good little flyboy that I am.”  
  
“There’s a spy at Sheppard Industries,” Shen said. “I can’t tell who sent the spy or why, but I do know that when my contacts pulled fingerprints off of a flash drive we know the spy accessed, it had your prints on it.”  
  
Sheppard Industries. Mini Me. Jack had agreed to be part of Mini Me’s backstop for some undercover gig he was doing for the NID. How had Mini Me been so sloppy?  
  
“Never been there.” Jack sipped his drink.  
  
“Prints don’t lie.”  
  
Jack smiled. “Sure they do. One time someone caught me on video trying to assassinate President Hayes. Wasn’t me, though. You know the kind of people we work with and the kind of tech they have access to. If one of your minions found one of my fingerprints on something this alleged spy accessed, someone is trying to distract you. Did you rearrange something important tonight to come have drinks with me?”  
  
Shen’s expression went carefully blank, which Jack knew meant she was panicking inside.  
  
“I don’t know what’s going on at Sheppard Industries,” Jack said. “But I do know the Air Force protects its own, and if anyone goes after any of the Sheppard family, it won’t be pretty.”  
  
Shen set down her drink, slid off the bar stool.  
  
“I know what people say about me,” Jack continued conversationally, keeping his tone even and friendly. “John Sheppard is like me turned up to eleven, plus he’s younger and has more energy.”  
  
“Pardon me, General O’Neill,” Shen said. “I must excuse myself.”  
  
“You’re both pardoned and excused,” Jack said, and Shen had enough calm in her to glare at him over her shoulder before she vanished.  
  
Jack supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised when someone else took Shen’s stool.  
  
He wouldn’t have admitted he was surprised when the person next to him was none other than Mini Me.  
  
“Are you even old enough to drink?” Jack asked.  
  
Mini Me flashed the bartender a smile and said, “Pint of guinness, please.”  
  
The bartender looked at Mini Me, then at Jack, nodded, and went to pull a pint for the kid. It was hard to look at Mini Me’s face and believe what was behind those dark eyes, dark eyes Jack saw in the mirror every morning.  
  
“I didn’t think you’d be so sloppy as to let one of her goons get your fingerprints,” Jack said.  
  
Mini Me smiled. “Not my fingerprints, are they?”  
  
“There wasn’t something someone - Carter, McKay, Lee - could do to, you know, change that?”  
  
“Some things never change,” Mini Me said. “Fingerprints, and handwriting.”  
  
“You sing good, though.”  
  
“You did, too. Too bad you never kept it up.”  
  
“Not much call for it in soldiering. I’m surprised there’s much call for it in - what is it you do?”

Mini Me’s smile was enigmatic, opaque, the kind that had driven Jack’s COs crazy over the years, the kind that had driven his junior officers crazy once he made CO. “That’s classified.”  
  
“From me?”  
  
“From a whole lot of people. The fewer who know, the less likely it is we’re going to screw this up,” Mini Me said.  
  
“We?” Jack echoed.  
  
“I need a favor.”  
  
“I don’t know anything about Sheppard Industries.”  
  
“You do know John Sheppard.”  
  
The bartender returned with a pint of guinness. Mini Me threw down some cash, enough for the drink and a hefty tip that was also part _stay away_. The bartender smiled, flirty and bright, and swept up the cash before she walked away.  
  
“What about John Sheppard?”  
  
“I hear McKay has annual leave coming up. Hear Sheppard does too. Sheppard Industries is having its annual shareholders meeting around the same time. Sheppard needs to be there. Bonus points if he brings McKay.”  
  
Jack raised his eyebrows. “And you think I can -?”  
  
“I know you can.”  
  
“McKay doesn’t like me.”  
  
“McKay’s on Sheppard’s team.”  
  
Something in the way Mini Me raised his eyebrows made Jack think that wasn’t just a reference to Sheppard’s gate team.  
  
“What’s in it for me?”  
  
“Enlightened self-interest,” Mini Me said.  
  
Jack finally sipped some of his drink. “How so?”  
  
Mini Me smiled. “You always did believe in helping yourself.” With that, he stood up, scooped up his drink, and vanished into the crowd.  
  
Jack watched him go and was pretty sure that Mini Me was getting less Mini and less Me by the second.


End file.
